The Mirror

Nobody knows her quite like I do. I know you're probably sitting there with the words 'Yeah yeah,' running through your mind, but it's true. I've been here since the start and I know I'll be here to the bitter end. She needs me. Though she hates to admit it.

Most of the time she ignores me. But I watch her. She intrigues me. A beautiful woman with long, auburn locks that cascade to midway on her back. It naturally hangs in ringlets but she hates wearing it like that and she often straightens it. It looks good that way but I prefer when she leaves the curls in. I think it suits her. She always wears her make-up immaculately, spends hours staring at herself, making sure it's even, that it looks good. It always does. She has beautiful green eyes that sparkle, full of excitement. But that exuberance is always gone by the time she gets home, when she has company.

She has them over most nights, sometimes more than one. And while she always has a cheeky smile plastered on her face, her lips warm and inviting, I know it's not real, because when she looks into my depths I can see that the sparkle in her eyes is gone.

I've seen the things she's done. I wouldn't care to repeat most of it. But there are costumes, outfits. Sometimes there are props; whips and handcuffs. A lot of them like that these days. She always wears something tight and fitting, something that accentuates her curves. They love that. Sometimes she'll wear special clothes, maybe that the man himself has picked out. She'll don the outfit and the character with it, and get on with the job. Of course, it's just a job to her. But to the guy, it's not. I can't help but laugh at them sometimes. No matter who it is, if they've been to her chamber more than once, if it's their first time, they always fall in love with her. Jessie is one of those girls. She's beautiful and crazy and every man wants her on their arm, not just as their play thing. But Jessie always shrugs off such advances, making sure they're gone by the end of the night. It's her way of earning her wage, and as much as she loathes she job, she's good at it.

Oh I know she loathes the job. I know it when I see her tear streaked face, her red rimmed eyes. But she can't see another way. To survive is to do anything needed, that's how she sees it. That's why she carries on every night, meeting someone different, making her wage.

She truly becomes herself at the end of the night when she's alone. She sits in front of me, a soft light illuminating the room behind her as she goes to work. First she pulls off her eye lashes, peeling them from her eyelids, watching the glue stretch as they slowly work free. Then it's the make-up. It often takes several wipes, used with gentle affection on her own skin, to take off first her eye-make up, black as midnight on the white sheet. Then her lipstick, blood red. And finally her foundation, her powder. The cloth always a dirty orange colour. All discarded in the waste paper basket on the floor.

It's then, at that moment, when Jessie truly becomes herself. Her face isn't as flawless without all of her make-up. I can see small wrinkles creasing the corners of her eyes. I notice small spots around her chin. I see the scar on her neck. None of those men see that. None of those men see the real her. I don't think they'd really care to. But I know the truth. I know the pain Jessie has been through. I know what she has run from.

Domestic violence. I've seen it before, and probably I'll see it again before my time is up. She left her fiancee, someone who was supposed to love her, but a man who beat and abused her every day. She ran from him eventually, after he almost ended her life one night as he held a knife to her throat. The scar served her as a reminder of what she had left behind, the life she used to have. While she often mourns for her family, her friends, she knows she could never go back. She fears for her life. Her life is what it is now. An escort. A woman who accompanys men to functions and dances. A woman who sleeps with anyone willing to pay the right price. A woman who will do anything to survive. I see that woman staring at her reflection. I feel her pain almost every night when she cries herself to sleep.

But I see Jessie in a different light when the sun rises, when the make-up is applied with tenderness, when she becomes someone else. She becomes the woman of the night that men lust after. But she no longer trusts any man. She will not have any intimate relationship again.

Nobody knows her quite like I do.



Word count: 862